The Ki to Martial Arts?

[padwan]

Defensive Qi or Wei Qi is generated by the body when you eat and drink. It's derived from the body breaking down the food which is taken in & extracting the qi from the 'course' part of food and water but due to its nature its unable to enter the channels or merdians directly. The energy circulates under the skin and in between the muscles and eventually vaporizes in between membranes and diffuses over the chest and the abdomen. Being diffused under the skin defensive qi comes under the control of the lungs. The lungs regulate the circulation defensive qi to the skin and the opening and closing of the pores.

but I guess as Aefibird said if you eat a load of rubbish even though I have found that the worst always tastes the nicest ;D then there will be less qi & general 'valued substances' for you body to use & so this will have a knock on effect on your health & performance.

Which obviously goes a long way to explain why I never feel particularly athletic the following day after having a curry & shed load of Guinness & Vodka Redbulls lol ;D

[Sasori Te]

I think it's not so much that chi/ki demonstrations are fixed, but that the uke's are already so awed by the person teaching that their minds help make the techniques effective for the demonstrator.

I'm not saying these techniques don't work on their own merit, but as far as the one touch ko's go I think this is more of a placebo effect on the part of the person being touched. In other words, they want to believe that it's true, so it is.

On the other hand, I've had some amazing things happen to me since I started meditating outside of class and using intent with visualization in class. For instance, I was sparring the other night with a 3rd kyu brown belt. He side-stepped and threw a round kick at my mid section. I was concentrating on being relaxed and generating as much power as I could. I brought my shin up to block the kick. His shin connected with mine, I wasn't moved at all and he was literally thrown back onto the mats about a meter. It also took him a while to get up. His kick didn't even give my shin a twinge. I thought that was a bit weird.

My pressure point techniques have also improved greatly. I can use them while sparring now and in my self-defense with ease.

[AngelaG]

Well I never thought it would be possible to get dizzy from a knock on the arms until a couple of weeks ago.....

[kev]

I've just started karate and know very little, if anything at all, about chi/ki. Will i learn this in class and does it have anything to do with the katas? Is that where you start learning about it?

Also, can anyone give me an idea of what things to expect, like pressure points you mention, what's that all about?

Sorry for all the questions but i'm just getting in to it all.

Cheers

[AngelaG]

Kev said:

I've just started karate and know very little, if anything at all, about chi/ki. Will i learn this in class and does it have anything to do with the katas? Is that where you start learning about it?

Also, can anyone give me an idea of what things to expect, like pressure points you mention, what's that all about?

Sorry for all the questions but i'm just getting in to it all.

Cheers

Whether you learn about ki is going to be down to your instructor - there is still plenty of debate as to whether ki really exists!

Pressure points, meridians, 5 element theory etc. are all very in depth subjects, and hopefully someone more experienced than me will be able to give you a brief synopsis on how it all works. (Over to you people!)

There is a new section on Karate Resource about pressure points - take a look and see if it clarifies anything to you.

Angela

[AngelaG]

I've found a book that goes into this a bit. I have only had a chance to skim through it at the moment but supposedly meat, milk and peanuts are very bad for ki. And peanuts aren't actually nuts either, apparently.

I'll update when I have the chance to study it a bit more.

Angela

**Edit: The book is called "Food for Spirit" and, I believe, is available for download on the Internet. A heck of a lot of BS in there but it may be worth a read. It's from "Moon Ta-Gu Books".

[Aefibird]

Have you got a web link to that Angela?

[AngelaG]

Aefibird said:

Have you got a web link to that Angela?

Here you go:

www.taijiworld.com/freebooks/food2.html

Take a look around that site - there's a lot of free stuff - and I had a mate good enough to print some out for me. (I find it very hard to read off screens for long periods of time)

[Aefibird]

Thanks!

[thingy]

So, I was reading a forum about Tai Chi yesterday, cos.
And they were saying that things like weight lifting, press-ups, sit ups etc were bad for your development in Tai Chi, because it makes the muscles tense and what you want is non-tense muscles. that's "non-tense", and not "tense".

So it got me thinking, is a MA like karate and Chi stuff a good working relationship? Let me know kids, this question could be quite pertinent to me.

[AngelaG]

thingy said:

So, I was reading a forum about Tai Chi yesterday, cos.
And they were saying that things like weight lifting, press-ups, sit ups etc were bad for your development in Tai Chi, because it makes the muscles tense and what you want is non-tense muscles. that's "non-tense", and not "tense".

So it got me thinking, is a MA like karate and Chi stuff a good working relationship? Let me know kids, this question could be quite pertinent to me.

As with everything else, I would think the main point here is balance (and I don’t mean as in standing on one leg balance).

Taking it, for a moment, from a Western point of view, one of the reasons people may worry about lifting weights, press-ups etc. is that it builds up your red muscle fibres. This way you will build your strength, however you also need to build up your white muscle fibres, also known as fast twitch, in order to produce speed and a more explosive punch. After all what’s the point of being able to hit hard if your opponent has got in 3 strikes to your head before you’ve even moved? Therefore any work out needs to be more complex to incorporate training in both muscle types – so a resistance exercise followed by a plyometric exercise.

The red fibres are built for exercises over a longer time and use an aerobic process. The white fibres are for short bursts and are anaerobic.

If Force = Mass x Acceleration we can say that in order to generate an effective punch (Force) you need to put your body weight behind it (Mass) and you need to move fast (acceleration).

I know this may sound a bit like I am evading the question but as it was based on tense muscles V non-tense muscles I thought it would be easier to explain what I think they are saying from a biological point of view. So basically as I said, it is about balance – it is better to flow and to hit whilst relaxed, but on the other hand we also need power behind the strike.

[thingy]

Yep, true.

When it comes to force in the mass x acceleration kind of way i can follow that. People always laugh at me when i say "twitch fibres" so it was good to hear someone else referencing them.

The question is really, I think, the "resting state" of your muscles, whether they hold tension - and in this context tense muscles vs non-tense muscles in conjunction with using chi. To use an analogy I read in this discussion, your chi is flowing around like water flowing through a hosepipe, and tense muscles "squeeze" the hosepipe, preventing such a good flow.

I don't know if this is true, it's just a question...

Now I do understand your point, but I'm thinking throwing a punch in an non-tensed manner is (maybe) not the same as doing some kind of punch using chi. Though both benefit from being non-tensed, maybe the chi one is more dependent on not just whether you've tensed a muscle or not at that moment, but on whether the musles general state is holding tension.

[AngelaG]

Yep, true.

When it comes to force in the mass x acceleration kind of way i can follow that. People always laugh at me when i say "twitch fibres" so it was good to hear someone else referencing them.

The question is really, I think, the "resting state" of your muscles, whether they hold tension - and in this context tense muscles vs non-tense muscles in conjunction with using chi. To use an analogy I read in this discussion, your chi is flowing around like water flowing through a hosepipe, and tense muscles "squeeze" the hosepipe, preventing such a good flow.

I don't know if this is true, it's just a question...

Now I do understand your point, but I'm thinking throwing a punch in an non-tensed manner is (maybe) not the same as doing some kind of punch using chi. Though both benefit from being non-tensed, maybe the chi one is more dependent on not just whether you've tensed a muscle or not at that moment, but on whether the musles general state is holding tension.

We were covering a bit about Ki in the lessons last week. IIRC ki does not really “flow”. It is there all the time; it’s just sometimes it may be at a point in larger amounts, or in smaller amounts. So if I hit and make use of ki, I assume I would want a large pool of ki in my hands. However I would assume that as you don’t want to “drain” energy from elsewhere you would want it to almost be a pulse at the moment you strike. (I may be talking complete and utter BS here by the way, I am just guessing on the bits I have learnt so far – if anyone wants to correct me please go ahead!)

Perhaps if your muscles are tense you are concentrating on using brute force rather than allowing for ki? In the same way that powerful people rely on arm strength, rather than using their entire body all the way down form their legs.

Some of the websites talk about ki replenishing muscles, so I would imagine that the more muscles you have the more ki they need to replenish. I have no idea if this is a factor, I just thought I’d throw it into the mix.

[seeker]

First post here and of course I have to reply to this topic first. I'm 46 now and studied Karate and Judo and a little Gung Fu (did wonders for my kicking technique from the cat foot stance) and now I'm back starting all over again with Shotokan. Anyway, I have a sort of weird perspective on Ki. Mostly everything I know about Ki/Chi/Prana I didn't learn from martial arts. When I was studying martial arts I heard about it in a theoretical sense but no real instruction.

I didn't learn how to work with ki until I became a Wiccan. That's when I learned visualization ( not really the best name for a technique that involves not only the visual sense but touch, smell, taste and hearing as well), meditation (also a form of auto hypnosis that quickly puts one into the alpha state) and how to ground and center (achieving a physical/mental/spiritual balance tapping into the earth's ki). Using these techniques Wiccans can move ki throughout their bodies share this energy with others and recieve that energy. Obviously not as any type of offensive technique though.

Anyway, while it takes a bit of dedicated practice I have found that I can use these techniques to continuously reproduce the desired effect, rather then stumbling into them all willy nilly doing it sometimes and not others. It doesn't take a lot of prep (with practice it only takes the intent and a deep breath to be focused and ready) and the techniques are perfectly natural that anyone can achieve (as long as they aren't like total mental defectives).

I'm still working on the martial arts applications starting with something I'm surprised no one has mentioned yet. Kiai Jutsu, the projection of ki as sound, rather then screaming really loud at your opponent you project your ki in order to have an effect on your opponent. It's a start since I'm not sure yet how to test the effects of moving ki into my hands and feet (and maybe beyond) during techniques other then breaking. Anyway that is my take on ki training.

P.S. Now that I looked around a bit more I found the topic on kiai jutsu. ;D

[Aefibird]

Hi Seeker! Welcome to the forum. Great first post!